Sunday, August 30, 2015

Dyeing Yarn with Easter Egg Pellets

The day after Easter, back in early April, I made an early morning run to my local supermarket to grab up all of the clearance Easter egg dyeing kits (PAAS Color Cups) I could find. Well, I didn't buy ALL of them but I did pick up 5 different packs. Why would a Jewish girl want to dye so many eggs? I don't want to dye eggs, I want to dye yarn!

Now this isn't my first time dyeing yarn with Easter egg pellets. These pellets are concentrated dye and citric acid and make space dyeing a ton of fun. I learned in my first experiment that you want to add some vinegar to the dyebath so that the colors will stick to the yarn faster and you will get less overall mixing. Will 1 T of white vinegar in 8 cups of water be enough of a supplement? Watch the video to find out!

You know what I just realized I did? I left the pot uncovered during this dyeing! This was totally intentional since I was filming continuously through the color expanding process, but I normally cover my pots. The water level stayed fine so maybe covering isn't so important.

I get a lot of requests on the ChemKnits YouTube channel to see what I've knit with the yarn I dyed. Truth be told, I don't often get a chance to knit with the yarn before I upload the video. Most of the yarn that I've dyed is sitting in my stash waiting for a project. The same is also true with my handspun yarns. I just spin and dye yarn faster than I can knit with it. Maybe someday I'll have to destash some of this yarn... what do you think?

2 comments:

That was great! Loved the time - lapse of the dye pellets doing their thing. Thanks for sharing your yarn dyeing experiments. It looks like so much fun. I just ordered more bare yarn so I can give space dyeing and kettle dyeing a try. And I have a feeling I'll be grabbing up a lot of Easter egg dye kits next April too, lol.

Oh, and yeah, you should totally destash some of that pretty yarn and knit up something fabulous!

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